Magic City

by Paula Guran

“So what do we do?” I ask.

  “Do you have a car?”

  “If you can call it that.”

  Dad bought me a beat-up old Toyota that doesn’t have much pep. Hell, I’m happy when it starts in the morning. But so far it’s gotten me back and forth to school.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” she says. “Drive me back to the rez and we’ll see if we can get some help there.”

  It’s only my third week in the new school. Do I really want to start skipping classes? I’m hoping to get on the basketball team, but that’s not going to happen if they think I’m a troublemaker.

  “Is that really the best idea?” I ask.

  “You’d rather stick around to see what the bandas have planned for you?”

  I think of the stretcher I saw leaving the campus the first week I was here.

  “No, but I can’t just quit school. I’ve got to deal with this sometime.”

  “Exactly. I need to finish school, too. It’s my only way off the rez and away from all this crap.”

  “Okay.”

  “So unless you’ve got a better idea,” she says, “we should get going.”

  I let her lead me down the stairs and outside to the parking lot. I keep expecting a teacher to stop us. Or a gang of Mexican boys with knives and chains. But we make it to my car in one piece.

  “Sorry about the ride,” I say.

  “Are you kidding? You should see the dust buckets on the rez.”

  The Toyota starts first try. I decide to take that as a good sign instead of having used up my luck for the day.

  “Which way?” I ask.

  She points down Leawood Road, which runs in front of the Rose Creek High School campus.

  “Take Leawood down to Mohave,” she says, “and hang a left on Jacinto. After that, it’s straight all the way.”

  She settles in her seat as we pull out onto Leawood. Opening the window, she adjusts the side mirror to check the road behind us.

  “So,” I say. “If we get through this in one piece, you want to go for a coffee or something sometime?”

  “Seriously? You’re hitting on me in the middle of this?”

  I glance at her, already shaping an apology, except she’s smiling.

  “Sure,” I say. “I haven’t had the chance to meet many people since I got here.”

  She laughs. “You know, I think Jack’s actually going to like you.”

  “Who’s Jack?”

  “My brother. Oh crap.”

  The sudden switch catches me off guard until I realize it’s something she sees in the side mirror. I look in the rearview. There’s a lowrider muscle car coming up fast behind us. Flames on the hood, the chassis about two inches from the ground.

  “How fast can you go?” she asks.

  “Not very.”

  “Then we’re screwed.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I stomp on the gas and the Toyota picks up some speed.

  “Are there any rougher roads around here?” I ask.

  “Why would you—oh, I get it. Take your next left, and then the first right.”

  I follow her directions. The second street is perfect. Full of uneven pavement and potholes. The guys chasing us are going to bottom out if they don’t slow down. They’ve probably got a hydraulic suspension system to change the height of the car, but by the time they do that, we’ll be long gone.

  And sure enough, we make a couple more turns and we’ve lost them.

  I let Rita direct me back onto Jacinto Road and open the Toyota up. I actually get it to twenty miles above the posted speed limit. I’m not worried about cops. I’d much rather get stopped for a ticket than get my skull bashed in by a bunch of crazy headbangers.

  “Nice,” Rita says. “Maybe we’ve got a clear run to the rez.”

  She bumps a fist against my shoulder and I give her a grin.

  Jacinta Road takes us out of town, west to the mountains. After awhile we leave behind the last few fast food joints and gas stations, and it turns into a rural highway. Now it’s just ranches and desert scrub. In other words, a whole lot of dusty nothing.

  I keep checking the rearview, but all that’s back there is a white SUV and a beat-up old pickup truck that turned onto the road after we left town—nothing any self-respecting gangbanger would be caught dead in.

  “What happens when we get to the rez?” I ask after we’ve been driving for a while.

  “We’ll talk to my uncle Reuben. I need to figure out a way to get the bandas off our backs without letting my brother know. If anyone can figure something out, it’s Reuben.”

  I don’t ask the question, but she sighs and answers me anyway.

  “Jack just got out of juvie,” she says. “I can’t take the chance of him doing something stupid and going right back in.”

  “Like taking on this gang.”

  She nods. “But I also don’t want my parents to pull me out of school—which they’ll do if they find out how bad it’s getting there with the stupid bandas. The whole reason I’m going to Rose Creek is because it’s my only chance to get into a decent university. The school on the rez is crap.”

  “University’s expensive.”

  “Tell me about it. But I work evenings and weekends at the Rosalinda House Café and I’ve been saving my money. Plus I’ve got a good chance at a scholarship.”

  I’m about to ask her what she’s going to major in, when I see something on the road far ahead of us. I can’t quite figure out what it is, but it looks like a bunch of cars parked across the highway.

  “Is that some kind of blockade?” I ask.

  But Rita’s already sitting up, hands on the dash as she stares down the road.

  “It’s the damn bandas,” she says. “They must have figured we’d head for the rez, so some of them got here ahead of us.”

  I start to brake.

  “What do we do now?” I ask her.

  “Make our peace with los santos?”

  “What?”

  “We’re dead,” she says. “What else can we do? And we were so close. The border of the rez is just on the other side of their blockade.”

  “And they can’t follow us onto the rez?”

  “They can if they want a full-out war with the Warrior Society, but it doesn’t matter. We’re not on the rez.” She shakes her head. “We are so screwed.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I take my foot off the brake and push the gas pedal to the floor. The Toyota starts to pick up speed.

  “Whoa, cowboy,” Rita says.

  “Hang on,” I tell her.

  I know the Toyota’s not like the dirt bikes that Ronnie and I used to ride at his grandparents’ place outside of Atlanta, but some of the physics are the same. The bandas are watching us approach and I can guess what they’re thinking: I’ve got to slow down and then they’ll have me.

  But I keep my foot on the gas until the last minute, then brake and haul on the wheel. The Toyota skids on the pavement, burning rubber. Now we’re coming at them sideways. I think I hear a gunshot, but it must have gone wild, the same way those gangbangers are scrambling to avoid being hit.

  Just before we slam into their cars my foot’s back on the gas. I haul the wheel again. We skid on the dirt verge, wheels spinning until they catch, and we shoot past the cars. There’s a bad moment when I almost lose control, but I finally get us back onto the highway. We pass the “Welcome to Kikimi Reservation” sign and leave the bandas eating our dust.

  “Holy crap,” Rita says. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Her phone rings before I can answer. I glance at the screen as she lifts the phone to see who it is. Caller blocked. She pushes talk.

  “Hello?” she says.

  She listens for a moment, then cuts off the call and gives me a worried look.

  “That was Bambino,” she tells me. “Says he knows where we live and to tell you that a gated community’s not going to keep you safe.” She waits a beat, then adds, “You live in a
gated community?”

  “Desert View.”

  “If your parents can afford that, why the hell are you going to Rose Creek?”

  I shrug. “Ask them.”

  “Huh. And seriously. Where’d you learn to drive like that?”

  “That was my first time.”

  She shakes her head. “God, you’re as crazy as my brothers.”

  “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that. See that place coming up on the left?”

  It’s an adobe building, surrounded by mesquite trees and cacti, and a dusty parking lot. There are a couple of beat-up pickups and a jeep out front. The sign on the roof is missing a couple of letters, but it’s still easy to make out: Little Tree Trading Post.

  “Pull in here,” Rita says.

  I park beside the jeep. We get out and walk to the door.

  Inside, it’s like an old general store. There’s a big wooden counter with souvenirs and jewelry with cigarettes shelved on the wall behind the cash register. A half-dozen Indians dressed like cowboys sit around a pot-bellied stove. The rest of the store is a mix of food staples and dry goods.

  One of the guys at the stove stands up when we come in. He’s tall and good-looking, with a long black braid. He wears a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots, same as his companions. I get a curious once-over before he turns his attention to Rita. He looks happy to see her, but a little puzzled as well.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he asks.

  She nods. “Is Jack around?

  “Naw,” the man says. “He’s on a run to Phoenix with Petey to pick up a part for that damn truck of his. Do you need to talk to him? I’ve got Petey’s cell number.”

  “What I need is for Jack not to hear any of this,” Rita says. She gives the guys by the stove a warning look. “And that goes for you gossiping hens as well. This gets out and there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “What’s going on?” the standing man asks.

  “Uncle Reuben,” Rita says, “this is my new friend Brandon.”

  And then she relates everything that’s happened from when I first met her in the stairwell. Her uncle’s face darkens with anger.

  “So you see why Jack can’t know about this,” Rita finishes. “He’ll go after the 66ers and end up right back in county.”

  “Someone still needs to go after Bambino and pound some manners into his head.”

  Rita waves off the suggestion. “You know that’s just going to make things escalate into a full-out war. I was hoping we could figure out a more practical—and legal—solution.”

  “Well, for starters, you’re not going back to your grandmother’s. And we should send somebody ’round her place to make sure she’s okay.”

  “I’m not dropping out of school.”

  “I know what it means to you,” Reuben says, “but school won’t mean anything if you’re dead.”

  Rita shakes her head. “Dropping out’s not an option.”

  I think about our new house in Desert View. It’s big with lots of room. My parents might be a little freaked, but they’re not the kind to turn their backs on anyone in need. And it wouldn’t be forever. Just until this blows over.

  “They could stay with me,” I say. “Rita and her grandmother.”

  Reuben’s eyebrows go up.

  “He lives in a gated community,” Rita explains. “Desert View.” Then she turns to me. “But you heard what Bambino told me. He’s gunning for you. No place is safe.”

  “Maybe not,” Reuben says. “But a place like that is contained. They’ll have to keep their numbers down. They come after you there and we can deal with them. I like it.”

  Rita gives a slow nod. “Maybe it’s time they got a taste of their own medicine.”

  I look from one to the other. “Um, what, exactly, are you talking about here?”

  “Don’t worry,” Rita says. “You and your parents won’t be involved.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “This is tribal stuff,” Reuben says. “It’s not something we can talk about with outsiders.”

  My head’s full of questions, but I can tell by the look on his face that he won’t give me any more explanation than that.

  “We’ll put together an escort,” Reuben says. “First, we’ll pick up Gabriella.”

  “My grandmother,” Rita explains.

  “And we’ll bring you all to Desert View,” he goes on, as though she hasn’t spoken. “The bandas will see us leave and after that—well, if they don’t make a play tonight, we’ll figure out what to do next. But bottom line, we’re putting an end to this crap.”

  Out in the parking lot, Rita’s uncle stops me as I’m getting into the Toyota.

  “I appreciate you stepping up the way you did to help my niece,” he says. “What I can’t figure out is why you got involved.”

  “It was the decent thing to do,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, I know that. It’s just, most people wouldn’t bother.”

  “I guess I’m not most people.”

  He studies me for a moment, then smiles.

  “I guess you’re not,” he says. “I just want you to know—however this turns out, our family’s in your debt.”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Maybe not in the white man’s world,” he says, “but here on the rez, that’s how we roll.”

  He claps a hand on my shoulder, then heads off to his jeep.

  “It’s just a thing,” Rita says when I get into the car. “It’s a way of saying he’s grateful.”

  “Okay. But I just want you to know I did it because it was the right thing to do. You do something like that, you don’t expect a medal—not where I come from.”

  She smiles. “But maybe a date for coffee?”

  I feel the heat rush up my neck.

  She bumps her fist against my shoulder.

  “Joking,” she says. Then she nods out the front window. “They’re waiting on you.”

  I start the Toyota and follow Reuben’s jeep down the highway back to town. He’s got one of the men from the trading post riding shotgun. The two pickups follow behind us with the rest of the guys. When we get to where the blockade was there’s a Mexican guy sitting on a chopper at the side of the road. He watches us go by without expression.

  A few moments later I hear the roar of his motorcycle and he passes our little convoy.

  After we pick up Señora Young Deer and Rita packs a bag with some clothes and toiletries, our escort brings us to the front gate of Desert View. Before I can pull in, Reuben gives a honk. I wait while he gets out of his jeep and comes over to my side of the Toyota.

  “When you get home,” he tells me, “just stay inside. Hang tight and let us do our thing. This’ll all be over come morning.”

  “Do you really think they’ll try to break into here?” I ask.

  Reuben nods down the street where a familiar lowrider with the flames on its hood is parked by the curb. Bambino Perez’s ride.

  “Once it gets dark, they’ll come over the walls,” Reuben says. “But don’t worry. We’ll be waiting for them.”

  How are you going to get in? I want to ask, but I don’t want to sound like a wuss.

  “Sure,” I tell him. “We’ll lock the doors and stay inside.”

  He waits until we get past the guardhouse before he returns to his jeep. As I wind through the streets to my house, I try to figure out what I’m going to tell my mom.

  Back in Atlanta, she was used to me bringing home strays, like when Bobby Newton’s dad lost his job and started taking it out on him. She let Bobby stay with us for a couple of weeks, no questions asked. Same with Susie and Rick Healey after their house fire. The insurance company put their family up in a motel that was so far away it made it really hard for them to get to school, so my folks suggested the kids come stay with us, instead.

  A sixty-year-old Native woman and her granddaughter is a new one, even for me, and I
have no idea how to begin to explain the mess I’m in.

  But when we get inside the house, no one is there. Mom’s left a note on the kitchen counter telling me that her friend Judy sprained her ankle, so she’s gone over to Judy’s ranch to help look after the horses and stuff. Dad’s working late, and she left me money to order a pizza.

  “That will make it easier,” Señora Young Deer says when I read the note to them.

  She’s pretty cool for a grandmother. Actually, she doesn’t look at all like a grandmother. She’s got long greying hair that she wears in a braid, and she’s dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, fringed buckskin jacket, and cowboy boots. And she doesn’t look lame—like she’s pretending to be young.

  “How so?” I ask.

  “Perhaps we can get this done before they return,” she replies, “which will save having to explain ourselves.”

  I nod. I’d be relieved to leave my parents out of this.

  “So, should I order a pizza?” I ask.

  “Let me see what’s in your fridge,” Señora Young Deer says. “If that’s all right with you.”

  “Sure. I just don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

  “Are you kidding?” Rita says. “Indian women love to nurture.” Then she adds to her grandmother, “How can we help?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t you have homework?”

  “Yes, but we’ll do it after dinner,” Rita says, then adds to me: “I noticed a hoop hanging above your garage door. I also had to miss basketball practice and I’d love to blow off some steam.”

  “You play basketball?”

  She frowns at me. “Why are you so surprised?”

  “It’s just . . . you know. You’re kind of . . . well . . . ”

  “Short?”

  “Well, sort of. For a basketball player.”

  Rita grins. “Let’s play some one-on-one. Maybe we can make it interesting—say, a quarter a point?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Brandon,” Señora Young Deer says. “The girl’s a shark.”

  “Aita!” Rita says. “Don’t give away all my secrets.”

  Her grandmother laughs. “Go ahead. Have some fun. But be back inside before the sun sets.”

  “We will.”

  Rita and I leave the kitchen through the door into the garage. I grab my basketball.

  “Does she always treat you like a little kid?” I ask.